Blame
by rae-sim
Summary: Minerva McGonagall reflects in her room the night after Albus died. Who's to blame? Maybe Albus was just an old fool who loved too hard and trusted too easily. OneShot.


Standard Disclaimer applies.

* * *

I sit alone in my room, cradling a cup of tea that went cold a long time ago. I should blame myself. No one just wakes up one morning deciding to become a killer, a murderer. And I have known him since he was a child, at least I thought I knew him, but I guess I didn't… 

I get up and I look out the window. It's dark outside.

So what should I blame myself for? For the fact that he became a Death Eater in the first place? I had him on my list of troublemakers the first day he set foot in this castle. I had known his mother – unpleasant, sour girl; unpleasant, sour son. Something slightly unhealthy about him, slightly unsavory. Sorted into Slytherin, of course. I knew that before I ever put the Sorting Hat on his head; he just had that look on his face.

And then, over the next few years, nothing but trouble. Hexes flying left and right, nasty stuff, some of it I am sure he invented. Oh, he was brilliant, all right, but a great mind isn't everything, not if it isn't paired with a good heart. He was always sour, angry, bitter, hateful, flinging jinxes, sticking out his foot so others might trip, trying to get those of my house expelled. And I believed James and Sirius, who wouldn't have? They had all the charm that Severus was lacking, they were popular, they were rising stars. Severus was a black hole, trying to suck all the light away from them, from us, from everyone around him. Why should they have liked him? And boys will be boys – it isn't as if Snape was an innocent.

It wasn't until later that I found out that his sourness and bitterness were not so much the cause as the effect of what they did to him. When he angrily flung it into my face, the whole mess, that one day when I hauled one of his Slytherins to his office, demanding for her to be punished. And he sent the student away without punishment, and it came out spewing, verbal diarrhea, venom, all the bitterness at the way he had been treated, in an angry torrent of words: the many ways they had made his life the seventh circle of hell for seven years, those bright stars of mine. I had an epiphany that day, a bad one, the kind you don't want to have, that maybe you could have saved someone's life, made someone's life better, and you didn't. If I had listened, if I wouldn't have assumed the worst by default…maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. But maybe it would have.

I went back two days later and apologized.

To say that he accepted my apology graciously would be a bald-faced lie. But it seemed to ease his mind, provide a bit of balm for old wounds. We got along better after that.

Yes, I blame myself for seeing what I wanted to see when he was a child. Instead of seeing him.

But maybe I should blame myself for something else. Maybe I should blame myself for trusting him. Because I did. I can blame _that_ on Dumbledore. The man was completely single-minded on the subject. _Yes, you can trust him. End of discussion. Never mind that he has that awful tattoo on his arm. He's a changed man. You can trust him._

So can you blame me if I did?

It was I who sent Flitwick down to get him. Definitely my fault, that. Not that it would have made a difference if I hadn't. If Snape—it is hard calling him Severus when I think of what he did—if Snape would have stayed in his dungeon, oblivious to the attack until too late, Albus would still be dead. Harry saw the whole thing—Albus was weak, dying already, and if Malfoy had turned out too lily-livered to finish the job, well, there were two more Death Eaters that would have done so with delight. So really, I guess I am off the hook for that. Rationally speaking. But my heart says differently, says that it was Snape who did it, the one he trusted, the one I trusted, the one I sent for.

Maybe it doesn't matter, who's to blame for what. Albus is dead. And Snape is gone, back to join his old friends, and Albus was just an old fool who loved too hard and trusted too easily. And that is where my brain hiccups and chokes, because, you see, he wasn't. I can't believe _that. _And something in me wants to still trust Snape, in spite of the evidence, in spite of Potter's word. In memory of Albus.

But I can't, can I?

I close the curtains and sit on my bed. Too late for that. Snape has shown his true alligiance, proven once and for all where his loyalties lie, what master he serves, and that is all, and I hate him. I do.

So why do I feel like crying for him?


End file.
